"Who is this rudderless hippy? How do I get away from him? Has he got a hunting knife strapped to his shin?"

Yes, I thought you might want to know. I grew up in the eighties and discovered Gaming (with a capital G) through Drakborgen (the original Swedish DungeonQuest), Amiga 500 and Drakar och Demoner (the first Swedish RPG). I could have written about a lot of other stuff as well, but since this is a game blog and you are (presumably) a gamer I distilled it down a bit. Here we go:

In the late eighties me and some classmates discovered roleplaying games and we made our way through pretty much all the Swedish RPG's released, inluding the hotly debated Kult. My fondest memories of this time was the sheer amount of roleplaying and the fact that there was no clear GM - we all switched roles depending on who had some cool idea or who had read a new adventure. Apart from the fantasy BRP Drakar och Demoner, there was post-apocalyptic Mutant, the cyberpunk Mutant and of course the Swedish translations of WEG's Star Wars, MERP and Chill.

Some time during the early nineties we also stared discovering miniature games. It all started with GW's Space Marine (Epic) and we played that game a lot. Really. I had a huge Eldar army and it kicked all kinds of butt! As we learnt more about the setting of Warhammer we made forays into 40k and Fantasy but it never really took off. Instead we had more fun with Necromunda, Blood Bowl, Battlefleet Gothic and again, Epic.

During this time I had also started eyeing foreign RPGs. In particular Call of Cthulhu and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. During the mid-late nineties we played a lot of CoC and the (surviving) investigators reached an almost legendary status - both mentally and physically mangled but alive. We also started playing WFRP (1st edition) and had a great time with The Enemy Within campaign, even if we only made it as far as the second part. By this time I had become the de facto game master, which I enjoyed (and still do!) but it made me miss being a player in an RPG.

In the late nineties we started exploring the World of Darkness with Vampire the Masquerade, but in the end I think we spent a lot more time planning and talking about it than actually playing. I also started getting generally more interested in finding and reading other RPGs just for the fun of reading them. I discovered Jovian Chronicles and Heavy Gear, Delta Green, Traveller and Cyberpunk to name a few. Our interest in board games was growing as well. We had been playing Drakborgen a lot as well as Combat Cars (aka Battlecars) but it was with FFG's release of Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition and the new edition of Arkham Horror that it really took off!

At that time our game library was fairly limited so each game got a lot of play time, which was really cool! We played TI intensively for a couple of years - really getting into it! We bought more game from FFG and enjoyed all of them, although as our collections grew we began playing more games less times. And while it's nothing wrong with that I do think we're missing out on some of the deeper tactics and strategies in many games.

Then I moved to Japan and analog gaming pretty much ceased for a few years. I did buy an Xbox 360 however and played a lot of games on that. Favourites are probably the Mass Effect series, Mirror's Edge, Portal, Deus Ex, Bioshock, Fable II, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Gears of War and the LEGO series of games. But then I found a group of gamers in Japan called JIGG: Japan's International Gamer's Guild. I started attending their bi-weekly meetups and had a lot of fun discovering new board games (that's mostly what they play) and making new friends. I was introduced to Race for the Galaxy and played Battlestar Galactica with them when it was first released (started as a Cylon and won the game).

At this time my interest in spaceship gaming (and space exploration in general) was growing and I got two fleets for Full Thrust, and started this blog! It was first meant as a place for me to chronicle my painting but has since then grown to a more general mess of gaming. Shorty thereafter I decided to take the plunge and get into Heavy Gear, even though I didn't have an opponent. I was also reading more RPG's, often buying them as PDFs as it's expensive to ship things to Japan. I did get the physicall hardcover of Diaspora when it became available from Lulu though, and I'm very happy with it!

A couple of years later I moved back to Sweden with my wife and reunited with my old gaming group. Almost immediately we started playing the just released 3rd edition of WFRP. And although they had also bought Full Thrust fleets they abandoned them for Firestorm: Armada. I bought into it but didn't feel the same excitement for it. Then early this year I managed to convince my friends to make use of the great 50% off army deals for Infinity from Corvus Belli and we've really enjoyed that game since! My friends just need to get painting. I also decided to finally get into 15mm sci-fi (again, without an opponent) and have had lots of fun collecting my forces (cheaply!) and painting them (quickly!).

After finishing The Gathering Storm campaign for WFRP3 I felt I needed something new. Either as a player or as a GM of a different kind of game. I was aiming for Diaspora but we only got started with it and didn't really continue. Now we have some new blood in the group and all kinds of different RPG opportunities are revealing themselves. First off we've already played and enjoyed Mouse Guard and a re-start of Diaspora is just around the corner. I've been eyeing Trail of Cthulhu and The One Ring as well. Only time will tell...

Aaaand, that's about it I suppose. If you made it this far then flowers and champaign are in order! Here you go!

Great to see the White Wolf - Stormbringer rules in your early set. I played it in 80's for about 3 years with a close group of friends. I then also went on to play games like Battletech and Full Thrust. Somehow I managed to skip WH40K! I feel lucky! :)

Hey Robin! Yeah, basic role-playing was used as the fundamentals when Fredrik Malmberg created the first Swedish roleplaying game "Drakar och Demoner". The system started out as more or less a copy but soon evolved into a completely different path. They kept using the (aweseome!) Elric illustrations by Michal Whelan for their covers though. :)

While I did, technically, play both 40k and fantasy battles it was GW's other games that I enjoyed the most. I'm glad I never really suffered from the GW blindness though, and was able to see other games that were out there. :)